


French Harp (or Harmonica)

by Jake



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Graffiti, M/M, harmonica
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jake/pseuds/Jake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras has new plans for Les Amis. Plans that may involve graffiti but certainly do not involve Grantaire and his ridiculous harmonica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Enjolras reached the back room of the Musain, his hair plastered to his face and his gloves soaked through and freezing his hands, Grantaire already had that damn harmonica out and was playing along to Courfeyrac’s awful rendition of ‘Royals’.

Shrugging off his jacket, which Joly protested was ‘too thin, Enjolras, it’s already October’, he dropped into a chair beside Combeferre and took a long sip of his friend’s coffee.

“Does he have to do that here?” he asked moodily, running his hands through his curls and scowling in their general direction.

“You could always ask him to stop, if it bothers you so much.” Replied Combeferre, taking his mug back.

“Oh, because he always cares if something bothers me, doesn’t he? Ridiculous man, with his ridiculous world views and ridiculous harmonica.”

“Actually I was talking about Courfeyrac.” Replied Combeferre, amused, “His singing’s atrocious and R might stop if he’s not there encouraging him. For the record though, he’s not the only one who’s ridiculous.”

“And we’ll never be royals,”

“ROYALS.” The others had very helpfully decided to join in for the chorus, causing Musichetta to scream at them for causing such an awful racket and probably scaring off her customers out front.   
Pleased though he was for the sudden quiet, Enjolras swore under his breath; he had been planning to ask Musichetta to make him a coffee but there was little chance of that now. Mentally cursing Grantaire and Courfeyrac, he sighed and resigned himself to sips of Combeferre’s awful milky concoction. Speaking of whom, he turned back to his friend, scowling.

“Shut up, or I’ll revoke your best friend privileges.”

“No, you won’t.” Smiled ‘Ferre, calmly, “You don’t have the energy to deal with Courfeyrac as your best friend all the time.”

“Well, maybe Courf can’t be my best friend either. I’ll have Feuilly or Jehan or Bahorel or-”

“Or Grantaire?” interrupted Combeferre.

Enjolras glared again. He really needed new friends.

 

They were about halfway through the meeting, and Grantaire’s head, if he was honest, was feeling more than a little fuzzy, but he listened to Enjolras prattle on about the injustice of the education system, only stopping him once or twice to argue.

They had been campaigning against the constant rise in tuition fees for quite a while, in between debating the benefits of, well, benefits, and organising several charity fundraisers. Naturally, they had all been involved in protests and such before – even Grantaire, who got roped into driving a few of them and ended up getting into a fight.

However; “I think we need something a little more drastic.”

Courfeyrac suddenly looked interested, while Jehan looked at Enjolras curiously and Combeferre sighed, already signalling to Grantaire that whatever their fearless leader was thinking, it probably wasn’t a good idea.

“I’ve been thinking-well, we’ve been thinking,” Enjolras corrected himself with a glance at his best friend, who simply pushed his glasses up his nose and continued reading with a mumbled ‘don’t blame me for this’. “That in order to get our points across, we should perhaps make our points more visible. Students, for example, will already have a lot of opinions on the topic, but they are unlikely to take any action without being prompted. In addition, many people are a little hazy on the facts, as they don’t feel the need to research it, so we would be providing them with the information to do something about it. I’m not saying that this is necessarily a recruiting operation, as it’s probably best if we’re not associated with it, but-”

“Oh, shit.” Interrupted a voice from the back of the room.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Enjolras took a deep breath before turning to Grantaire. “Do you have something you wish to add?”

“You’re talking about graffiti, aren’t you?”

All eyes in the room immediately snapped to Enjolras, who was glaring at Grantaire, though more in a defensive way than an aggressive way. He sighed, “Yes.”

The room, predictably enough, tumbled out of their shocked silence into separate conversations and debates, while Enjolras simply waited for Grantaire’s inevitable-

“You do know that graffiti’s illegal, right?”

And there it was. “Yes, Grantaire, I had considered that.”

“’Cause, you know, I’d be all for legalising that and stuff, but it’s not.” Explained Grantaire, slowly, appearing to be waiting for Enjolras to change his mind.

Well. That wasn’t happening. “I do, in fact, know that graffiti is illegal. This is what I mean by more drastic actions.”

“So go to more protests or something. But not like the one that got violent. That was dangerous. Anyway, Apollo, I’m serious. This is illegal. Like, something that you could go to jail for. Who’s supposed to save the world when you get arrested?” Grantaire appeared fairly agitated, which seemed odd, as he wouldn’t be expected to get involved anyway.

“Could you stop mocking what I’m trying to do for one second and-”

“I’m not mocking you, I just don’t want you to get arrested!” replied Grantaire angrily.

“Look, whether you think it’s a good idea or not is irrelevant, R, considering how you don’t care about any of this anyway!” Enjolras snapped, patience seriously wearing thin. He had been uncertain about suggesting this to the group in the first place, as it was more serious than anything else they had done, and he was fully aware of the risks to their futures. “Why are you even here? All you do is drink and argue with everything I say.”

Grantaire barked out a laugh. A short, humourless laugh that matched the surprisingly bitter look in his sea-blue eyes. “The view.” He replied simply, raising his bottle in Enjolras’ direction before taking a swig.

“Be serious.”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head, breaking the eye contact and mumbling into the rim of his bottle, “I am wild.”

Clenching his fists, Enjolras turned back to the rest of the group, who had fallen back into a tense quiet as they watched the exchange. “So,” he began, looking at each of them in turn (except Grantaire, obviously), “What do you guys think?”

Eponine, with a small glance towards R, shrugged, “Me and Bahorel are down for anything illegal, I think. You know, should be fun.”

Bahorel nodded beside her, before turning to Marius and clapping a hand on his shoulder heavily, almost causing Marius to tumble off his chair before replying nervously. “I’m not sure whether I’d like to get involved in the actual doing of the, uh, graffiti. But I’ll certainly help with the planning and such, if that’s okay?”

Enjolras nodded; he hadn’t really expected any more from Marius, but his girlfriend readily agreed, as did Joly, Bossuet (though with a request that he not be given any particularly important job), Jehan and Courfeyrac, who seemed irrationally excited about the whole prospect.

 

Grantaire had been watching this quietly from the back of the room, and, seeing everyone sign-up, rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically, “Alright then, you got me. When are we going?”

Enjolras turned back to him, scowl reappearing on his face. “I don’t remember giving you permission to accompany us.”

Ouch. Well. He supposed he should’ve seen that one coming. Managing a tight smile, he replied quietly, “I don’t remember asking.”

“Enjolras.” Said Combeferre; a quiet warning that Enjolras, as usual, paid no heed to.

“Well you don’t have permission, whether you asked for it or not. You can’t come with us, because we don’t want you there. You’d just get in the way, and while we have time to deal with you here, I’m not going to risk anything serious being messed up by you. I don’t even know why you’d want to come; don’t you think it’s a waste of time?”

“Oh, of course I do. Absolutely useless. Won’t do anything at all.”

Enjolras let out a small chuckle, eyes hard as they looked at Grantaire. “Are you sure you’re talking about the right thing there?”

“Enjolras.” Said Jehan, angrily.

Grantaire raised an eyebrow before nodding slowly. In silence, he once again rose his bottle toward Enjolras, drained the last of it and fumbled in his pockets for a crumpled £5 note, which he left on the table before pulling his beanie over his curls and waving briefly at Cosette and Eponine.

 

A minute or so later, they heard the door of the café swing closed loudly, and everyone rounded on Enjolras, who Combeferre noticed suddenly looked very tired.

Jehan, who looked furious, went to stand up but was stopped by Cosette whispering something in his ear, causing him to nod slowly and sit back down.

“Do you have to do that, Enj?” asked Bahorel, really looking disappointed more than anything else. They used to get angry, but after so many arguments, they weren’t surprised enough anymore.

“Sorry.” Replied Enjolras, and he was. He rarely meant anything he said when he was so worked up, but apparently his brain didn’t connect to his mouth properly around Grantaire. Wait. No. That didn’t sound right. His mouth spewed out random rubbish when he was around Grantaire. No. That wasn’t right either. His mouth was apparently determined to hurt Grantaire as much as it could. He was often thankful for the fact that Grantaire didn’t really care that much about anything as he was incredibly relaxed about accepting Enjolras’, often incredibly short and much too direct, apologies after an argument.

“Okay, Enj,” said Combeferre quietly, “I think that’s enough for tonight. We’ll all get together on Monday to work out the details for your grand plan, alright?”

Gradually, the group began to leave the Musain in small groups: Courf, Jehan, Bahorel and Eponine had all decided to go and get drinks somewhere, Feuilly and Joly both had late shifts and Bossuet was helping Musichetta close up. Everyone else began heading home, Combeferre dropping Enjolras off at his and Courf’s flat with strict instructions to ‘go straight to bed; you don’t get nearly enough sleep to be healthy’.

Walking into the flat and switching the lights on, Enjolras went and got changed into his pyjamas before making a cup of hot chocolate and collapsing onto the sofa. Briefly he remembered Combeferre’s words, before opening his laptop and beginning his politics essay.


	2. Chapter 2

From somewhere on the floor, the first few bars of ‘Flaws’ started playing, and Jehan tumbled out of bed to rummage in the pockets of the jeans he was wearing last night, before finding his phone and rolling his eyes at the caller ID.

“Where’s the car?” a sleep-roughened voice mumbled into his ear when he answered.

“Good morning to you too, Grantaire, darling. I slept absolutely wonderfully, thanks, how about you?” replied Jehan, slipping past Courfeyrac and grabbing his coffee before pressing a light kiss to the other man’s scowl.

“No, seriously, Jehan. I want to get out of here before Katie-Katherine-Charlie? wakes up.”

“And who’re Katie, Katherine and Charlie?” asked Jehan, raising an eyebrow, while behind him Enjolras looked up from where he was lazily stirring sugar into his drink.

“Katie, Katherine OR Charlie. I can’t remember her name; it’s just some girl I went home with.” Replied Grantaire, and there was a thud as he closed the door to Katie-Katherine-Charlie’s flat.

“Blonde?” Asked Jehan, glancing back at Enjolras, but their fearless leader was now slumped on the kitchen table mumbling incoherently and clutching his grumpy kitten mug (a present from Courf), and appeared not to have heard.

“However did you guess?”

“Just a hunch,” said Jehan, who was now pulling Courf’s jacket on and blowing a kiss to him before leaving the flat and heading down the hall. “I need to pick something up and then I’m meeting ‘Ponine for coffee. Where are you?”

“Uhh, you know Montparnasse’s old flat?”

“You end up in the most unpleasant places.” Commented Jehan by way of confirmation, climbing into his little white Fiat.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway if you just drive there; it’s about two streets away and I’ll start walking anyway so you should find me en route.”

“I’ll see you in ten minutes then.”

“Ten?” Asked Grantaire, raising an eyebrow as he fumbled with a cigarette. “Where are you?”

Jehan blushed. “I, uh, I went home with Courf last night?”

A deep chuckle echoed in his ear as Grantaire replied, “Well, congratulations then, I guess. Naturally, I expect all the details when you pick me up, and I mean all the details.”

“Oh, shut up, R. See you soon.”

 

Hanging up, Grantaire took a long drag of his cigarette, before softly exhaling and watching as the smoke curled up from his mouth and dissipated into the sky. Being October, it was reasonably cold outside, and he found himself thinking wistfully of his beanie as the cool breeze swept his curls around his face and chilled his exposed ears. Shoving one hand into his pocket, he began to walk slowly down the street, enjoying the silence, the weather and the view. Well, except the weather and the view, because it was actually cold and starting to drizzle, and Jehan was pretty accurate when he said it was ‘unpleasant’.

Unfortunately, he had only walked a couple of streets when he could no longer enjoy the silence either, as he happened across a man being kicked out of someone’s house. Glancing at his watch, Grantaire sighed heavily. It was entirely too early for this shit. Judging from the way the man was slightly unsteady on his feet, he was already, or still, drunk, and seemed supremely unconcerned at the woman shouting at him from her front door, simply replying with a surprisingly un-slurred ‘well, fuck you too’ before turning and beginning to stroll back down the street.

Well, shit. Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear. Five minutes later. Still, he and Jehan should just make a pact to never speak of Montparnasse again.

Or, the more logical part of his brain supplied, possibly you should stop getting drunk and going home with shady-looking people who live in shitty neighbourhoods. 

The rest of his thoughts, however, were more along the lines of ‘I swear he uses some sort of witchcraft to find us’ and ‘shit, where do I hide?’.

Regrettably, in the middle of the street, there was nowhere to hide, and it only took a couple of seconds for Montparnasse to spot him.

 

“Well, well, well. Grantaire, I haven’t seen you in a while. How’s Prouvaire?” Montparnasse’s signature slightly-threatening-and unbelievably-infuriating smirk had returned.

“He’s fine. And how are you?” Asked Grantaire, determined to at least keep his words civil, even if his tone conveyed his dislike of the man in front of him.

“Good, good. Business doing well, you know.” He answered slowly, plucking the cigarette out of Grantaire’s hand. “Speaking of which, it’s been too long since I saw any of your crowd. Don’t tell me you and Ep’ got over all your moping? Or perhaps your beloved Apollo finally reciprocated?”

“Don’t call him that.” Grantaire snapped, hands clenching in the pockets of his hoodie.

The smirk widened as Montparnasse recognised the weak spot he had hit upon, and he leaned closer to Grantaire, blowing smoke in his face. “Sure you don’t want to buy anything? I could give you a discount, you know, to celebrate the return of one of my best customers.”

He was sorely tempted, he couldn’t deny that, but he’d promised the others and besides, he didn’t want to get caught up in Montparnasse’s web again. Still, that didn’t stop the hesitation and the way his throat tightened as he replied, “Go away, Montparnasse.”

“Sure thing, R.” He grinned, eyes flicking over to the white Fiat that had parked on the other side of the road before he walked off, the smoke from Grantaire’s cigarette leaving a trail in the air behind him.

 

Sighing deeply, Grantaire walked over to Jehan’s car and slumped in the passenger seat, holding up a hand as Jehan went to say something.

“Look, I didn’t buy anything, alright? I just bumped into him. Now can you take me home so I can get drunk?” asked Grantaire, sounding unreasonably tired given that it was little past nine.

“Actually, I’m sure you will be utterly unsurprised to find that you’re not going home to get drunk. We’re going to Cosette’s.” Jehan, in complete contrast to his friend, was unreasonably awake given that it was little past nine. “I need to pick up a book for Lit and she can drop you home later, provided she’s feeling charitable.”

 

It was about half nine when they reached Cosette’s, and Jehan mercifully didn’t mention his run-in with Montparnasse while he drank his tea and chatted about whatever book it was that he was borrowing, and Grantaire was left alone to sip on his coffee, get changed into the spare clothes he kept there and nurse the headache that had been blooming since he awoke.

When Jehan left to meet up with Eponine, Cosette was content to put on the first season of Supernatural and let it play in the background while she made a start on her Literature assignment and Grantaire practised drawing angels, one or more of which may have evolved into Enjolras, but no-one really needed to know that.

 

By the time Cosette finally put down her pen, paused the TV and put the kettle on, both of them had blisters on their fingers from too much time with a pen or pencil in their hands and Grantaire was starting to have the urge to punch Dean Winchester in the face. Or the car. Placing a mug of tea in his hands and shrugging out of her hoodie so that she was just wearing a light t-shirt and bright pink shorts, she gestured for him to get up and pushed the sofa back against the wall. Grantaire took a sip of his tea before placing it carefully on the coffee table and slipping into Cosette’s room to change into his sweatpants.

When he emerged, Cosette was warming up and practising her steps in the middle of the living room, and he joined her for five minutes before she found the music she’d downloaded onto her iPod and they began to practise the actual routine.

 

They had been practising for about an hour, and, in Cosette’s opinion, they had improved dramatically since their first attempt, which ended with them both on the floor laughing helplessly. They were about halfway through this particular run though, which until that point had been almost flawless, when Grantaire noticed a figure standing in the entrance to the kitchen and promptly dropped Cosette.

“Oh, shit, are you okay?” he asked anxiously, momentarily distracted from Enjolras, who was now watching them concernedly.

“I’m fine, honestly.” Cosette brushed off his worries and picked herself up from the, thankfully soft, carpet. “Enj, it probably would’ve been nice if you’d got our attention or something, rather than scaring us half to death.”

“I, uh, sorry,” Enjolras replied, blushing slightly, “I was just-I didn’t know you could dance.”

Grantaire, sensing that the comment was more directed towards him, replied nervously, “Yeah, me and Cosette have been going to classes since we were 14.”

Diverting his eyes from the muscles behind Grantaire’s unreasonably tight t-shirt as he breathed heavily, worn out from the exercise, Enjolras commented quietly, “Well, you’re very good, both of you. That was-it was beautiful.”

Cosette beamed. “Thank you.”

 

The three of them stood motionless for a few moments, Enjolras staring at Grantaire, Grantaire trying very hard not to stare at Enjolras, and Cosette looking amusedly between the two.

“So, Enjolras,” she began, breaking the silence, “Was there a reason you came? Not that we don’t appreciate your company.”

“Oh, yes,” Enjolras fumbled with the folder he was carrying, cheeks slightly pink as he realised he’d been staring. “I was going to give you some posters to put up for the fundraiser next month. Also Musichetta asked if you could take Joly’s shift this afternoon ‘cause he thinks he’s coming down with something.”

“I can.” Grantaire interjected, ignoring Enjolras’ look of surprise. “I have nothing better to do today. Besides, then I’m out from under Cosette’s feet and she can get on with her assignment. Or watch Supernatural without me throwing something at the TV.”

“Thanks,” replied Cosette, taking the posters from Enjolras, “I don’t suppose you could drop R at the café, could you? Only I really do need to get started.”

Enjolras, looking faintly surprised - or horrified, Grantaire thought – asked, “Why, when’s it due in?”

She raised an eyebrow. “I meant Supernatural.”

“I-yeah, okay, I’ll take him.”

**Author's Note:**

> The plan is that this should be updated every Friday, though obviously I might not necessarily keep to that because I'm bad at remembering things and I have lots of school stuff at the moment so yeah


End file.
